Forgery of documents

Abstract

The difficulty of determining and categorizing a crime of falsity derives essentially from the meaning of the word 'false' which lends itself to several meanings and interpretations. The word 'false’ embraces such notions as deceit fraud, fraudulent acts and anything which is not true. What is certain however, is that falsity per se is not the end result of a criminal human activity for, who makes a falsehood does not do so merely for its sake but normally it is a means whereby an illicit act tends to procure a material or moral gain. It would therefore be helpful to distinguish between the generic and the specific concept of falsity thus arriving at the technical meaning of criminal falsity. Essentially, most cases of forgery are cases of obtaining (or attempting to obtain) property by deception. Either charge can be brought. But the law court is generally disposed to punish forgery more severely than ordinary cases of obtaining by deception, the idea being that people must be able to repose trust in the authenticity of documents. Whether this attitude is justified is open to question. It is true that a cleverly forged document is a mode of deception against which one has little protection. But one may have equally little protection against other clever deceptions, while, conversely, a forgery is none the less so in law for being clumsy or trivial. The basic agreement is whether we should do away with the general offence of forgery leaving the ground to be covered by certain special offences plus the offences of deception and attempted deception. Even under Maltese law one finds that forgery offences are by no means restricted to Title V of the Criminal Code, in fact in Title IX sub-title III, which deals with fraud, the law specifically mentions forgery in at least three occasions. Therefore, any amendment to the law of forgery can be done vis-à-vis two aspects : (a) do away with a general law of forgery, retaining the law of counterfeiting of currency, with perhaps forgery of a limited amount of public documents ; and for the a revised law of deception or fraud; (b) categorically simplifying the law of forgery, without mentioning the separate crimes of forgery, as the Maltese Code does. This may be done by the enactment of general provisions which cover the forger of all document, etc.